Michael Bonner

Welcome back William Friedkin and Matthew McConaughey - both missing in action, it seems, for some years now - with the terribly funny Killer Joe. Typically, for the director of transgressive genre pieces like The Exorcist and Cruising, one of the first things we see here is Gina Gershon’s lower half, naked. “It’s a bit distracting, your bush in my face,” complains her step-son, Chris (Emile Hirsch).

Hey there. I hope you all had a good Bank Holiday weekend. Allan’s off today – an extra day holiday, no less – so I’m filling in on newsletter duties.

In 2005, I went to a talk Ridley Scott gave to ahead of the release of his Crusader epic, Kingdom Of Heaven.

Already, this year has provided plenty of good gear for fans of music documentaries. We've had Kevin McDonald's Bob Marley film and more recently, Lawrence Of Belgravia has capped a resurgence of interest in the idiosyncratic career of the Felt singer.

Arctic Monkeys have spoken about their plans for the follow-up to Suck It And See and have hinted that their next album may be filled with faster songs. Speaking to Spinner, bassist Nick O'Malley stressed that it was early days in the writing process, but that the band had a rough idea of what they wanted to do.

The line-up for Antony Hegarty's Meltdown festival at London's Southbank Centre has been revealed. The Antony And The Johnsons singer is curating the annual festival, following in the footsteps of Jarvis Cocker, David Bowie and, most recently, The Kinks' Ray Davies, by curating the 12-day festival which runs August 1-12.

Ringo Starr is to write the soundtrack for a new Hollywood musical, according to Deadline.com. Starr will collaborate with former Eurythmics'Dave Stewart on Hole In The Fence, a coming of age story about a group of kids who form a band in a mining town. Starr and Stewart came up with the idea and will act as both executive producers and songwriters for the film.

REM's Mike Mills, Hop Chip's Alexis Taylor and Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake are among the artists confirmed to appear at Big Star Third - A concert performance of Big Star's legendary third album, Sister Lovers. The show will take place at London's Barbican Centre on Monday, May 28.

My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields has claimed that the delay in reissuing the band's albums Isn't Anything and Loveless was because their record label Sony hid the original demos.

Metric have spoken about their collaboration with Lou Reed, which appears on their new studio album, Synthetica. The Canadian band will release their fifth full-length offering on June 18. The record contains a total of 11 tracks, and has been produced by the group's guitarist Jimmy Shaw. Reed appears on a track called "The Wanderlust", singing backing vocals. Singer Emily Haines told NME that she first became friendly with The Velvet Underground man when he quoted some of her lyrics from "Gimme Sympathy" back at her.